Even Moving to Mars Has Become Political (and Depressing)

Capitalism, politics, and partisanship have landed in the middle of our escapists fantasies about the Red Planet.

Mars’ still-pristine sands have become anything but a universal escape haven.

Photo illustration by Natalie Matthews-Ramo. Illustration of rocket on Mars by Stocktrek Images/Thinkstock.

Deep in the sunken place of Elon Musk’s Twitter mentions, a political proxy war is playing out over one of the few things I thought was safe—the age-old, universal, nonserious lament that if shit gets real here on Earth, we can just move to Mars. Shit certainly does seem to be getting real, but Mars’ still-pristine sands have become anything but a universal escape haven. Lately, even the idea of moving to Mars has become as fraught as it is hypothetical. And the fact that the 30-month trip to Mars and back would increase your chances of long-term brain damage, dementia, and cancer (thanks to the cosmic radiation) is just the beginning.

But can America just go to Mars? Mars technically belongs to everyone, according to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. So space conquest is legally an equal-opportunity endeavor. Still, getting to Mars is an enormously expensive undertaking, and so far, it seems like the private sector is the group with the highest likelihood of making the jump. Musk’s SpaceX is leading the way, but a one-way trip aboard the still-imaginary SpaceX Interplanetary Transport System is estimated to cost a cool $200,000. We can all dream of a Mars escape should doomsday dawn, but the average Joes and Janes won’t get to go to there. Instead, the colonizer class—the billionaire moguls and tycoons whose greed has left us all lamenting the state of our current planet —will get to retreat to colonize anew.

Complicating matters is the fact that Mars is not, in fact, habitable—the planet’s wisp of an atmosphere makes its surface intolerable. Of course, there are already theoretical plans to build out the atmosphere: Musk has a proposal to artificially create a second Martian sun by repeatedly detonating nuclear weapons or a “more reasonable” scheme to pump greenhouse gases into the air to plump the atmosphere and induce warming. In other words, we could make Mars livable by exporting humanity’s two biggest existential threats: nukes and global warming.

Even our escapist fantasies can’t escape the petty politics and problems of our day. It’s no surprise—science fiction has repeatedly prophesied the collapse of a Martian colony. Spoiler: Humanity’s flawed humanity is the culprit. The next time you find yourself wishing that you could just move to Mars, remember that Martian civilization is likely to look a whole lot like the earthly mess you’re probably running from.